I found a post recently on Writer Unboxed called What’s It Like To Be a Girl? The author, a man named Bill Loehfelm, recently wrote a novel with a female protagonist. He talks about how he, as a man, goes about writing a woman:
The mistake, I decided early on, would be to focus on the woman part of Maureen’s character. I didn’t think “What would a woman do/think/feel/want/fear” in any given situation. I focused instead on creating a complete character, a complete person, and asked myself what would Maureen do?
I think this makes a lot of sense, and it applies to all groups, not just women. In fact, I think this is one of the most fundamental things that writers (and people in general) get wrong when they think about other groups of people:
The group is not the most important thing about the person.
Kurt the gay guy isn’t primarily a gay guy, he’s primarily Kurt. Hiroshi the Japanese dude isn’t some generic Japanese archetype, he’s Hiroshi. If somebody wanted to write me as a character, it would be nonsense for her to say, “Okay, I have to get inside the head of a white male,” because I’m not A White Male. I’m Brian.
That’s not to say that groups don’t matter. Obviously people are at least partly defined by their groups, and writing with a blind eye to differences between groups is not the path to believable characters either. People have complex relationships with their own gender/racial/cultural/etc. identities, which can range from proud to resentful to apathetic in the space of a single day.
So, as with most writerly matters, it’s tricky. If you really don’t feel comfortable getting into the head of a person in some particular group, maybe the best thing is to read writers who belong to that group – and notice I said writers plural, as in five or ten, because God Save Me From The Man Who Has Read One Book on any particular subject, this one included.
People are not groups. People are people.
Hm…I feel like this was a pretty serious post. Like you’re picturing me right now with stern eyes and a disapproving frown. Actually my eyes right now are mostly just sleepy, and I haven’t had any coffee yet. Maybe I’ll do something more fun tomorrow.
Brian D. Buckley 